


pleasant to be understood sometimes

by elumish



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Female Peter Parker, Gen, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Women Supporting Women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26116822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: “We are going to have a very long talk about this,” May tells her. “But first I’m going to get drunk and work the bulk of my anger out shouting at bad reality television.”
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 17
Kudos: 281





	pleasant to be understood sometimes

“If you ever take my underage kid out of this country without my permission again,” May says, “I will make sure you are arrested for kidnapping.”

“Fair enough,” says Tony Stark.

\--

May cries after finding out that Peta is Spider-Man. And then she takes her out for Thai, and they eat in silence for 25 minutes until May asks, “Spiders?”

“I was bitten by a radioactive spider,” Peta tells her.

“That’s not what I was asking,” May says, and she looks a bit like throwing up. “Actually, I don’t want an answer to my original question.”

“What was your--”

“No.”

Peta eats a bit more of her khao khluk kapi. May drains her glass of beer.

“A radioactive spider?” May asks finally.

“Yeah,” Peta says around a mouthful of rice. She swallows it down with a bit of effort, then says, because she’s trying honesty this time, “You know my field trip to Oscorp?”

May frowns at her. “The one that you got the flu after?”

“There was a bug,” Peta offers, half-joking, and May makes a Noise.

Maybe joking is the wrong tack here.

May’s jaw works a bit, and then she says, “And so you, my fifteen-year-old, decided--oh my God. You were--Spider-Man was in Germany. You told me that was from a bully, not--”

“Technically, he is from Queens.”

“I need a lot more alcohol than what I have currently consumed,” May says. “A  _ lot _ . Preferably some tequila, and maybe a whole lot of  _ what were you thinking _ ?”

Peta had just stuffed a whole mouthful of food in her mouth, so now she has to work her jaws like a chipmunk trying to get it all down so she can answer. “Mr. Stark needed my help,” she says finally, throat hurting a little. “And it was the right thing to do.”

May tries to drink from her beer glass, even though it’s empty. “And your internship?” she asks finally. She sounds tired, and it makes Peta’s chest hurt.

Peta makes a face. “That’s me doing Spider-Man stuff. I do report to Mr. Stark, or, well, his head of security, Happy, his name is Happy, not that he is happy, I mean...”

“We are going to have a very long talk about this,” May tells her. “But first I’m going to get drunk and work the bulk of my anger out shouting at bad reality television.”

“Will it at least be Food Network?” Peta asks, with a very little bit of hope.

“It will be Real Housewives of New York City,” May says vindictively. “And I will be playing it very loudly, and you will not complain. Do you understand?”

Peta nods.

“Good.” May’s voice softens, and she reaches out to take Peta’s hands in hers. “I love you,” she says. “You will not make me stop loving you. I want you to remember that, always, no matter how mad I get or how much we disagree. You are my family, my niece, my child. You are mine, and I love you very much, and I am proud of you every day that I’ve known you.”

\--

They meet up in a Starbucks, and Stark shows up wearing a hoodie and sunglasses. He looks like a guy who looks like Tony Stark.

He hands her a cup of coffee even though she has a cup in front of her already, then sits down and lounges in his chair, sipping his own massive coffee.

“Hot Aunt,” he says in greeting.

“You have, quite notoriously, done some dumb shit,” she says, taking a sip of hot coffee. “But what the  _ fuck _ were you thinking?”

“In my defense,” Stark begins. “Actually, no, I don’t have a good defense.  _ But _ , she was running around in that makeshift hoodie well before I met her. I did give her a safer one.”

“And you lied to me and took her to Germany to fight the  _ Winter Soldier _ .”

He makes a face, hiding it behind another sip of coffee. “Yeah, that was not my best day. She was great, though. Very, uh, good at punching.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m not helping.” He puts his cup down, and she can see Edwin typed up on the order sticker. “I screwed up. What else is new. What can I do for you, Hot Aunt? Or am I just here for you to yell at me? Which, granted, is fair.”

May sighs and drains the rest of her original coffee, before grabbing the one he got for her. Her shift starts in an hour, and it was a long night. “I’m here to tell you that you’re going to give Peta a Stark Industries internship. A real internship, not just her leaving voicemails for your head of security.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“You’re using her. I don’t necessarily understand why, but I know that you are. She saved your company. She’s a girl who wants to go into engineering. She’s brilliant, she’s creative, and she is a girl who wants to work in a world that is still, unfortunately, ruled by men. I want her to have every advantage she can, and that means having Stark Industries on her resume. If you’re going to use her, she’s going to get to use you. And I’d prefer you pay her for it, but I’m not going to insist on that.”

“Are you blackmailing me?” Stark asks, sounding delighted.

He is a truly weird person, and May will never understand why people want to jump in bed with him. His money is not enough to make up for how he must be incomprehensibly strange to have sex with.

“I’m not blackmailing you,” she says. “I’m telling you what’s going to happen.”

He grins at her, from behind his obnoxious facial hair. “She is smart. I’m not sure how smart yet, but I’ll get her in my lab and see what she’s got. I can’t have just anyone interning for Stark Industries.”

May can respect that, if he actually follows through on it. “I’ll expect a call within a week.”

Stark salutes her with his coffee cup and stands, tapping on the table. “She’s lucky to have you,” he says.

“I’m the lucky one.”

Stark turns and walks out of the Starbucks, dropping his cup in the garbage as he goes.

May goes to find a bathroom.

\--

Mr. Stark’s lab is  _ amazing _ .

There’s stuff absolutely everywhere, and there are a couple of robots whirring around, and Mr. Stark is there, too, shoving things out of the way on one of the tables to make space for...something.

“I want you to show me how you made your web-shooters,” he says.

“Do you have any dumpsters?” she asks, laughing.

Mr. Stark stares at her. He looks a little offended. “I have the best materials in the world, and you want to find things in a  _ dumpster _ ?”

“That’s how I made them before.” She wanders over to the table, putting her backpack down and pushing it under the table so it’s not a tripping hazard. “Uh, do you need me to make the web material, too? Because I don’t think you have what I need for that in here. No offense, this just isn’t, you know, a chemistry lab. Not that it’s bad, it’s just--I mean--”

Mr. Stark laughs. “Chill, kid. You don’t need to defend my lab to me. I’m not a chemist. Just...write out your formulas, will you? Draw some shi--stuff for me. I want to know you know your stuff. Prove it to me.”

That is terrifying, but Peta isn’t one to say no to a challenge, so she pulls some loose, only slightly crumpled paper from her backpack and starts writing.

Mr. Stark makes an alarmed noise, but he doesn’t actually say anything, so she ignores him.

She writes out her whole process for making her web material, then pushes it off to the side and starts sorting through what he has on his table. She’s not really sure if he has anything she can use to make the web shooters themselves without taking something apart; he seems to be working at a bigger scale than her web shooters.

Finally, she asks, “Do you have AutoCAD or something, or do you want me to actually fabricate them? Which I can do, just, uh, maybe not quickly.” She doesn’t want to waste too much of his time doing this, especially not when she doesn’t really understand why she’s here in the first place. To prove her worth to Mr. Stark, yes, but he just texted and said that Happy would be picking her up and driving her to the Tower, without any explanation as to why.

“Do I have AutoCAD,” Mr. Stark scoffs. “Fri, pull up a blank hologram at the Spiderling’s work desk.”

A blue glowing goddamn hologram appears in front of her, right over the desk, and when she reaches out to touch it, it moves with her hand. It doesn’t have form or solidity, but it moves somewhere between how a real blob would move and what you get when you hover a stylus over a tablet.

“Whoa,” she breathes.

“Catch,” he says, and when she turns to look he lobs a stylus at her. She catches it neatly, no bobbling, which she’s a little impressed by. “It’s pretty receptive to whatever you’re trying to do, but the stylus is usually more accurate for initial drawing. You’re in drafting mode, so lines will auto-default straight unless you tell it not to. Palm down gesture for a keyboard on the desk, and you can tap lines to input dimensions. Fri, follow the Spiderling’s orders for the hologram.”

“Understood, boss.”

“Jesus,” Peta mutters.

“Go wild, kid,” Mr. Stark says. “And talk it out, while you’re doing it. I want to know your thought process.”

“Okay,” Peta says, holding the stylus up to the hologram. “Here’s what I did.”

\--

She gets a Stark Industries internship. A real one, not just something to tell her classmates as an excuse for her never being around.

Apparently Mr. Stark made a deal with May, and so after school two days a week she goes to Stark Tower and works on stuff in one of Mr. Stark’s labs, and she goes out patrolling four of the other five nights, and Sunday night she stays home or hangs out with Ned and doesn’t do anything spider-y.

Mostly.

But the lab is  _ the best _ , and she isn’t allowed to touch any of the Iron Man stuff but she is allowed to work on her own suit, and whatever else she wants to work on, and sometimes Mr. Stark is even there instead of just having Friday supervise.

Not that Friday isn’t an awesome supervisor. One day Peta has a full forty-five minute conversation with her about the tensile strength of spider silk, and Friday answers all of her questions even though they must get annoying, and she even directs Peta to food when she gets too hungry.

Mr. Stark has a  _ kitchen _ next to his  _ lab _ and there is  _ food _ , and Peta would eat half of what’s in the kitchen if she didn’t feel bad about it.

The kitchen is where Mr. Stark finds her three weeks after the internship starts, when he strolls into the room and says, “This is not where I left you.”

“Sorry,” she says guiltily, around a mouthful of fancy bread. She sticks the rest of the loaf behind her, like that will make it less obvious that she’s just devoured about four people’s worth of bread in the last twelve minutes.

Mr. Stark waves that away with an airy, “Mi kitchen es su kitchen.”

“Cocina.”

Mr. Stark blinks at her.

“Cocina,” Peta repeats, wishing she hadn’t said anything in the first place. “It means kitchen in Spanish. Um. Though you probably already knew that. Never mind.”

“I am familiar with many languages,” Mr. Stark says. “My Spanish is sadly lacking.  _ Lo parlo italiano _ .”

“ _ Anch'io _ . A little,” Peta clarifies. “Aunt May’s parents were first generation, so she grew up speaking it, and she taught me. Sort of.”

“ _ Anyway _ ,” Mr. Stark says, “I was looking for you to tell you that I need to go do actual business-y stuff that you’re not allowed to see, so now is probably a good time for you to go home and do whatever it is teenagers do. Unless you want to keep Pepper company while she stares at wedding ideas and drinks.”

He says the last bit like it’s a joke, but Peta would give her literal left arm to be near Ms. Potts, the coolest woman ever. “Does she know who I am?” she asks, and her voice goes embarrassingly high, and she tries to swallow down the remnants of the bread still in her mouth. “Ms. Potts, I mean?”

Mr. Stark squints at her like she just asked if the Earth is round. “Yes? Who do you think runs this company? She had to know that I was going to have an acne-ridden Spiderling running around my very secure lab.”

“I don’t have any acne,” Peta says, a little offended. She keeps her face very clean, thank you very much. She hasn’t had a pimple in a full two weeks.

“Whatever. Yes, Pepper knows who you are, and she knows all about your night life, because I try not to lie to her. Much. Anymore. She’s been asking to meet you.”

Peta basically dies. “Can I? Meet her, I mean. I will do all of the things if you let me meet her. Literally all of the things.”

“Whoa, okay, chill, Spiderling. Fri, tell Pepper she’s going to have a guest for her Wine and Wedding. I have to go do work before that turns into a Wine and Murder Me. And take your bread with you. I don’t want half-eaten bread laying around in my kitchen until the next time you come back.”

With that, he strides out of the room.

“If you will follow the lights,” Friday says cheerfully, “I will take you to Ms. Potts.”

“Am I dreaming?”

“You are not,” Friday tells her. “Don’t forget your bread.”

There is no way on Earth Peta is going to walk in to meeting Ms. Potts carrying a half-eaten loaf of expensive baguette, so she resigns herself to stuffing the rest of it in her mouth between here and getting off the elevator.

\--

When Virginia Potts first meets Peta Parker, the girl is dressed like she wandered through a twelve-year-old boy’s closet in the dark, grabbing the first articles of clothing she got her hands on. She’s also chewing something, and there’s the end of a baguette hidden poorly behind her back.

“You’re Pepper Potts,” the girl says around a mouthful of bread.

“You must be Peta,” Pepper says, standing and offering her a hand. Peta sticks out the hand with the bread in it, then turns bright red and sticks her hands hurriedly behind her back. When she offers her right hand again, it’s bread-free. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You’re my hero,” Peta says, after swallowing what looks like a significant amount of bread. “You are my actual favorite person. I mean, other than my aunt, because she’s, you know, my aunt. But in terms of other people.”

Pepper is a little flattered at that. “Not Tony?”

“Mr. Stark is very cool,” Peta says, perching on the edge of the chair Pepper gestures towards. “But you’re  _ legendary _ . There are so few women who are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and a Fortune 500  _ tech  _ company. I go to a STEM school, and half the girls I know want to be you when they grow up.”

“Wow. Well, I hope I live up to your expectations.”

“You are also very pretty,” Peta says, then looks like she didn’t mean to say it. But she continues, “ _ So  _ pretty. I am very envious of your shoes.”

Her shoes are four-inch heels that hurt like hell, and they would also not go even remotely with the Star Wars t-shirt and straight-leg jeans Peta is wearing. “Thank you.”

“Not that I would wear them,” Peta adds, a little hurriedly like she’s trying to reassure Pepper of something. “They look very uncomfortable. But I’m envious of your ability to walk in them, and also they are very pretty.  _ Wedding _ . You’re getting married. That’s so cool. I have been to exactly two weddings, and one of them I had to leave because I had an asthma attack from the incense.”

“No incense, then,” Pepper says, amused. “Duly noted.”

Peta reminds her of Tony, but in the good ways; all of the babbling, none of the self-hatred or alcoholism. A lot less self-assured, a lot more guileless, but there’s a spark there that makes her understand why Tony let her in.

“Is it a church wedding?” Peta asks. “Or a--a synagogue wedding, or--I don’t actually know what religion you all are, because that would be a weird thing to know, and also your Wikipedia article doesn’t say, which means you’re probably not Jewish, because Wikipedia usually says that. Which is kind of weird.”

“I was raised Methodist,” Pepper tells her, “and Tony thinks if he sets foot in a church he’ll catch fire, so we’ll be getting married somewhere very expensive that has no religious connotations.” She shuffles the magazines on the table around until she finds the one she’s looking for. “You want to help me look at dresses?”

“Frack yes,” Peta says. “You are going to look  _ so pretty _ .”

\--

“If I get you a dress, will you wear it?”

“Only if it has space on it.”

“I can live with space.”

\--

The thing is that Peta has a body shape that can best be described as "rectangle drawn by a five year old." Not quite straight, but in no way resembling something with curves. Ned once very generously described her as “person-shaped, but in a good way.”

It comes in handy when being Spider-Man, because nobody looks at her and thinks “that’s definitely a fifteen-year-old girl in a skin-tight outfit.” Or if they do, they haven’t said so on the internet yet.

It comes less in handy when it comes to her trying to look fancy, because even though Aunt May taught her how to do makeup years ago, she always looks a bit like someone putting on their parents’ clothes. Suits work a little better, she learned at Ben’s funeral, but then she looks like a twelve-year-old boy, which is also not the look she’s usually aiming for.

All this explains why Aunt May is staring at her in dismay, an hour before Mr. Stark’s Stark Industries Winter Holiday Party. All the interns are invited, even a weird intern like Peta, and they’re supposed to get dressed up for it, but Peta looks, well…

“It’s not that bad,” Aunt May says optimistically. “I mean, it fits.”

Peta pulls at the dress, which fits only in the most technical sense of the word. “I think I’m skinnier than I was before.” She pokes at her stomach. “I have  _ abs _ .”

“Your abs are only a little visible through the dress.”

Peta lets the fabric settle back down against her skin and gestures expressively at it.

Aunt May winces. “Fair point. We probably should have gotten something with thicker fabric. At least if you’d wear something that isn’t a sports bra, you’d have some curves to show off.”

“I don’t own anything that isn’t a sports bra,” Peta tells her, feeling a little desperate. “What do I need a regular bra for?”

“This, obviously,” Aunt May says, sounding equally desperate. “Why don’t we just, um--”

Ominously, there’s a knock at the door.

“Shi--shoot,” Peta says. “Happy.”

“I’ll go get him,” Aunt May says, striding away quickly. “You do look nice,” she calls back, before yanking the door open. “Hi, Happy.”

“The kid ready to go?” Happy asks brusquely.

Aunt May hesitates. “She, uh...”

“I look ridiculous,” Peta says, stepping out of her room to show off the awfulness that is her dress. “We bought it off the sale rack without me actually trying it on because I hate shopping,” she adds, lest he think either of them thought this actually looked good on her. “Probably not the best idea, in hindsight.”

“Yes,” Happy says, squinting at her. He pulls out his phone and taps on it, then puts it up to his ear. “Ms. Potts?” he says. “Yes. No. The kid needs something to wear.”

Peta needs to sink through her floor and maybe through the three floors below them, to be interred in the sketchy basement laundry room’s least awful washing machine. “Ms. Potts doesn’t need to worry about--”

Happy puts up a hand, and Peta almost swallows her tongue. “Will do,” he says finally, then hangs up and sticks his phone back in his pocket. “Put some normal clothes on,” he says to her. “Ms. Potts has a dress for you.”

\--

It’s a space dress.

It has long sleeves and a v-neck and  _ accurate constellations _ , and Ms. Potts says, “It was supposed to be a Christmas present. I suppose it’s just an early one now,” and Peta makes some incoherent noises and tries not to cry.

She’s already done her makeup. She’s not allowed to cry.

It looks  _ so good _ on her, and it swishes when she turns, and she feels almost as unselfconscious about her body being weird and enhanced and unearnedly muscular as when she’s in her baggiest hoodie.

“Your Aunt said you also would wear a suit,” Ms. Potts is saying, while Peta is watching the dress swirl around her as she turns in front of the mirror, “but every woman needs at least one dress that makes them feel good. The suit can be your birthday present.”

“You don’t need to--”

“Tony can get away with how he dresses because he has more money than God,” Ms. Potts says, a little briskly. “You aren’t starting there. You’re starting where I started: middle class, ambitious, and wanting to end up somewhere big. I want to help you get there, and part of that means making sure that when you need to look good, you can.”

Peta feels small now, and like her skin is a little too tight. “Thanks.”

“I haven’t helped as many women as I would have liked, getting to where I am now.” Ms. Potts looks at the two of them in the mirror, and then she shakes her head and says, “I need to go make sure Tony is properly attired. You look lovely, Peta.”

“Thank you.”

The dress really is swishy.

\--

Peta is the youngest person at the party by, like, a lot of years.

There are other interns there, but they’re all college students and mostly Masters or PhD students, and then there’s just her, being all teenager-y and stuff. She looks like she’s someone’s kid.

Mr. Stark is late to the party, and he spends a while talking to what seems like literally everybody, but then his eyes land on her and he gestures her over. She’s a little surprised by that, but he’s  _ Mr. Stark  _ and she’s definitely not going to ignore him, so she hurries through the crowd over to him.

He’s standing in front of a couple people she vaguely recognizes but can’t place, and when she reaches him, he says, “This is the intern I was telling you about. Smart kid, part of my outreach program to get high school students more involved. Peta, this is Dr. Annie Cheung, head of R&D, and, uh...”

“The husband,” the man who is presumably not Annie Cheung offers. “Lin.”

“Hi.”

The woman who is presumably Annie Cheung offers Peta a hand, and Peta shakes it, feeling very grown up and also totally starstruck. Annie Cheung is freaking legendary. She used to head SI’s medical tech division, and her work on neural integration with prosthetics is amazing. 

“I read your article on neuroprosthetic biocompatibility,” Peta tells her in lieu of having anything else to say. “And like half of your articles on prosthesis material science, and also that article about you in Forbes when you were named head of R&D.”

Dr. Cheung’s eyebrows go up, and she asks, “Are you interested in prostheses?”

Peta shakes her head. “It was actually the material sciences stuff that I was looking into, and then I started reading about biocompatibility, and it got me thinking about topical or injectable methods to promote self-healing, sort of like the nanites in Stargate Atlantis but not, you know, evil, and whether there’s a way to have bandages that promote skin cell growth in such a way to close wounds faster without causing cancer from uninhibited cell growth, or maybe some sort of nano-bots that could enhance healing of internal organs or even reverse things like osteoporosis by regrowing the bones.”

“Well,” Mr. Stark says, “I’ll leave you ladies--and husband--to talk.” And then he wanders away, into the crowd.

Peta is now afraid she has said too many words and is kind of hoping the floor will eat her before Dr. Cheung can politely tell her to fuck off, but instead Dr. Chung smiles and says, “There’s some work they’re doing in the medical division here that you might be interested in, if Tony can spare you for a bit. Most of it we don’t let interns work on, but I’ll talk to him about letting you sit in for a bit, if you’re interested.”

“That would be  _ amazing _ .”

“There are some other authors you should take a look at, if this is a field you’re interested in.” Dr. Cheung pulls out a pad of paper and a pen from her purse and starts scribbling something down. “Most of them work on prostheses, but, uh, Sisulu and Teav are both materials scientists and Čaušić focuses specifically on nanomaterials. I can also put you in touch with Reyna Uziel, who heads up SI’s medical division in Texas. That’s where the bulk of our research on nanomaterials is happening, and she would be able to tell you more about that then I can. Tony said you’re in high school?”

Peta nods. “Yeah. Midtown Tech.”

“Good school. My nephew went there, but he probably graduated before your time.” Dr. Cheung rips off the paper from her pad and hands it to Peta. “And I’ll connect you with Reyna. What’s your contact information?”

Peta rattles off her SI email address, and Dr. Cheung makes a note of it in her pad. 

They exchange polite adult pleasantries.

Dr. Cheung walks away with The Husband.

Peta dies of happiness, a little.

\--

Christmas without Uncle Ben fucking sucks.

\--

Peta climbs her way out of misery by the time school starts up again, more or less, and it helps when Ned bumps against her and smiles and tells her he got a lego Stark Tower for Christmas that he’s been waiting to build with her. It’s 3482 pieces.

She promises that she’s free on Sunday. Ned smiles like he always smiles, like she made his world better by saying that. He is the actual best friend in the whole world, and she tells him that, because his self esteem is shit sometimes and she doesn’t want it to be.

Ned deserves good things.

Better things than Flash, who wanders over to make a snide comment about Ned’s weight and then call her Penis, because that one time eight years ago she said that word aloud in front of people. Classy, that Flash. Very classy.

Peta doesn’t punch him, even though she a little bit wants to and has a little bit wanted to for about eight years. Uncle Ben always told her not to punch someone unless they were being dangerous or she didn’t feel safe, and he’s not dangerous, he’s just an asshole.

Peta has spent a lot of time and brainpower debating the potential rationalizations for punching Flash, just once, in his stupid fucking face. Unfortunately, ‘Uncle Ben said not to’ generally wins.

Damn personal responsibility and ethics. 

\--

“Are you going to change your last name?”

Ms. Potts puts down her tablet and looks at Peta to ask, “What do you think?”

Peta bites her lip. “I don’t want to sound selfish.”

A delicate brow goes up. “Why would you sound selfish?”

Peta hesitates, kind of wishing she hadn’t brought it up in the first place. “I don’t want you to change your name,” she says finally, in a rush, “because I don’t want people to think you’re important for being Mrs. Stark.”

Ms. Potts stares at her, and then she smiles and says, “Thank you,” and picks up her tablet again to go back to scrolling through flower arrangement ideas.

\--

On TV, Spider-Man goes down and doesn’t get back up, and May is trapped in the hospital, trapped in the ER, trapped standing in front of this decade-old TV playing CNN on mute with delayed closed captioning, and it’s not like she can go to her supervisor and say ‘that’s my niece, that’s my child, that’s my baby,’ so she’s stuck just standing here watching as Peta continues to not get up out of the crater of cracked asphalt she’s lying in.

She doesn’t think she breathes.

Not until Iron Man appears on screen and picks Peta up and disappears into the clouds with her, and a few seconds later the closed captioning reads “IRON MAN LOOKS LIKE HE’S RESCUING THE DOWNED VIGILANTE--”

And May tears her eyes away from the TV and goes back to work.

She’ll cry when her shift’s done.

When she checks her phone, she has a voicemail with Tony Stark saying, "We're lucky the kid has super healing, but she'll be fine in a couple days. Come to the Tower when you can."

After her shift, May calls Midtown and tells them Peta will be out for a few days, and then she heads towards Stark Tower.

It’s not until she gets there and is standing outside of it with people streaming out that she remembers that, shit, it’s an actual office building and not just the monument to one of the city’s worst days.

With a sigh, she pulls out her phone.

“What?” Tony Stark demands, too loud like he has the phone jammed up against his mouth. He’s holding it between his shoulder and his head, she imagines.

“I need to know how to get in your building,” she says, and she manages not to sound too impatient through practice of many years as a nurse.

Tony Stark makes an odd half-irritated noise, then says brusquely, “Right, yes, I haven’t keyed you into the private entrance yet. Head inside and go to the security desk. Give them your name and ID and they’ll give you a temporary security pass. Take an elevator up to the 22nd floor. Happy will meet you there and get you the rest of the way.”

He hangs up on her.

She will not murder him until she’s seen that her kid is okay, she thinks, and heads inside.

The people at the security desk don’t bat an eye; they look at her driver’s license, type something into the computer, and then hand her back her license with a badge with a big T on it.

She half-expects someone to stop her, but the badge gets her into the elevator bank, and then she gets up to the 22nd floor with only a few stops. Nobody wants to head  _ up _ at six in the evening, she thinks.

Happy is standing there when the elevator door opens, and he says, “C’mon.”

He takes her down the hall to another elevator, one labeled ‘Private’, and the doors slide open before he has to say anything.

When they’ve stepped inside and the doors are closed, he says, “Med Level.”

“Medical level,” the elevator says in a cheerful Irish accent. “Understood.”

They start moving.

“How’s my kid?” May asks, to fill the silence.

“Mr. Stark knows more than I do,” Happy says.

Which is not, in itself, a reassuring answer.

She can’t tell how many floors up the medical level is, but it doesn’t take that long for the elevator to stop and the doors to slide open, and May strides out to find Tony Stark there, pacing back and forth with his sleeves shoved up to reveal odd red metal bracelets on each wrist. He’s staring at his phone.

“How is she?” May asks.

“Worse than we originally thought,” Tony Stark says, “but better than if she were almost anyone else.” He stops pacing and looks at her, though his hands are still working, turning his phone over and over like he can’t manage to stay still. “Dr. Cho can explain it better once she gets out of overseeing the surgery.”

“What kind of surgeon is Dr. Cho?”

“Not a surgeon,” Tony Stark says, turning and walking away like he expects her to follow him. She does. “She’s a geneticist, but she’s also the world’s foremost expert on superhuman human, which means that she oversees all medical procedures on people like Capsicle and our very own Spiderling.”

“Who is the surgeon, then?”

“I have three on rotation here. The one on today is Dr. Katherine Alstair. She’s a trauma surgeon at New York Presbyterian, and I pay her a lot of money to not talk about anything she sees here. She is very, very good.”

May unclenches her fists. She takes a breath. She says, “Thank you for saving her.”

Tony Stark turns to look at her, and his expression is as serious as she’s ever seen it. He says, “I’m going to make sure she lives long enough to be better than I am.”

\--

Peta wakes up and immediately wishes she was still asleep.

She has a set of tubes up her nose and her whole body hurts like a motherfudger, and when she sits up she immediately throws up all over her blanket before she even manages to get her eyes open.

“Okay,” a woman’s voice says. “I’m going to get you a new blanket, and a bag in case you throw up again.”

“Sorry,” Peta moans, trying to get her eyes open. Everything looks blurry, and she doesn’t know where the fuck she is, and she doesn’t like this feeling at all. “Sorry. Shit.”

The blanket is taken off of her, and then another one is laid over her, and a bag is put in her hand, one of her hands, the hand that doesn’t have a needle sticking out of it, and she doesn’t like this, she doesn’t like this at all, but a hand guides her back down and she closes her eyes and she’s asleep again.

\--

Peta goes back to school when she can walk without her back feeling like it’s trying to eat her spleen. It takes a few days, but given that she apparently bruised the shit out of literally her entire back and also splintered one of her ribs  _ into _ her lung, she figures that she’s lucky.

Lucky and part-spider.

“You look like someone smashed you into the ground at a very high speed,” MJ says when she drops down next to her in the cafeteria, while Peta is trying to eat a sandwich without actually moving. 

“Thanks,” Peta says, a little hoarsely. Her lung is still maybe not thrilled with her.

“It’s funny,” MJ says. “That exact thing happened to Spider-Man just a few days ago.”

“Funny,” Peta says. She debates whether leaning down will hurt more or less than lifting her arm up to stick the sandwich in her mouth. The first seems like it will hurt more. She contemplates doing it anyway.

Everything sucks.

MJ touches her face, where the very last remnants of a bruise are healing. All of the blood in Peta’s body goes right there, making all of her nerves super sensitive. She wants MJ to never stop touching her.

“Anyway,” MJ says, pulling her hand away. “You look like shit. Maybe stop doing that.”

\--

May goes on a date. The first one since Ben.

She hates it. They’re barely on the appetizer and she already wants to go home to her kid.

He works at an architecture firm, he told her, and he's spent the last twenty minutes talking about a client who wants a neo-brutalist aesthetic. And then he meets her eyes and gives her a nice smile with teeth that are a little bit crooked and says sheepishly, "I'm sorry, this is probably a bit much for first date talk. I usually try to save neo-brutalism for a third date. How was your day?"

And May thinks maybe she'll manage to stay through dessert.

Peta is still up when May gets home, and May curls up on the couch next to her and waits until Peta leans her head against May.

"Are you going to see him again?" Peta asks finally.

"I might," May says, because she doesn't know yet, and she makes it a point not to lie to Peta if she can avoid it.

Peta grins. "Was he hot?"

"So hot," May says, and they laugh, both of them, and Peta doesn't pull away when May wraps an arm around her and pulls her close.

**Author's Note:**

> I decided, if I'm going to write self-indulgent nonsense, it's going to be self-indulgent nonsense about women supporting each other, and also Tony Stark, I guess.


End file.
